Not all officials are equal, nor sincere

By RICHARD SHAWSun Advocate publisher

As I sat and listened to the meeting concerning the controversy over the property in the Balotas Subdivision on Thursday night, I realized how lucky we are to have some of the officials leading our county that do.

Now this is the political season, and I'm in no way endorsing anyone at all. Every governmental agency has its good people and bad. Carbon is not different.

But watching our county commissioners speak about the process that had taken place to get the Scofield/Bureau of Reclamation problem negotiations to a point where at least there was something to salvage was at the least a heartening thing, despite the fact that so many people in the audience would have to come up with money to keep their cabins and other structures in their family.

Patrick Painter, the representative from District 67 which represents the western part of Carbon County (basically Carbonville west) said it best when he was talking about the job the commissioners had done on this situation.

"The commission you have in Carbon County is the real deal," he said. "They have been fully engaged in this process. Many commissions around this state would have said in this same situation, 'This is a private matter. You take the feds to court yourself.'"

I have never met a public official that I have completely agreed with on every issue. At times in the 10 years I have either covered or followed the commission through this paper I have had heartburn over things they have done.

But not once in my years working with these guys have I ever felt their were insincere in what they thought was right.

In this case they, along with some other people from the county who were on the negotiation committee, faced a formidible task. They said publically at the meeting that the BOR negotiating team had been pretty rigid until the governor got involved.

But knowing these guys and those who were with them, I think they had accomplished a lot more than they admitted by the time the statehouse got involved.

It's nice to know that these men are out their fighting for Carbon County whether it be on land issues, the proposed Gooseberry Project or to protect our energy resources.

It's easy to nitpik officials to death. It's easy to disagree with them sometimes. But I honestly believe our commission has no equal in the state when it comes to caring about the people that live in their county.